Media Violence's Impact on Youth

Violence In Media
The Effects of Violence in the Media
Julianna V. Cronan
Alexander Early College
4th Block Honors English
Mrs. Bumgarner
Abstract
Many would say that violence in the media is the key problem in society today. However, an
analysis of violence in the media reveals that violence does create a more aggressive world, but that
is not the only plausible explanation. When violence is watched or participated in, the viewer's
heart rate and blood pressure increase and they have difficulty creating empathy for the others; they
are more apt to act out that anger. Others would argue that statistically violence has decreased in the
world, and that the violent behavior that is demonstrated by a few does not represent the whole of
society. It is with this reason that many say that there should be stricter ratings on video games and
movies, and parents should be better educated on ways to "teach" their children ways to deal with
the violent content in a "healthy" way.
The Effects of Violence in the Media
You are what you watch! An examination of violence in the media reveals that media violence does
create a more aggressive culture. Even though violent crime has decreased, violence in the media
had doubled or even tripled. This violent activities viewed by children and adults in video games
increase areas of the brain that control emotional arousal and decrease parts of the brain that deal
with self control and empathy. Studies show that children become more
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Violence In The Media
Violence in the media tends to be compelling to people across America. The average American has
seen 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders, on television by age eighteen. Often, the
media plays a pivotal role in the way violence is portrayed to citizens. The media can decide which
pieces of information to include or expunge from a broadcast. People soak up the incidents that are
happening in other neighborhoods across the United States because it does not affect them personally.
Violence shown on television can often be manipulated to fit one side of the story, and is tolerated
by the public because emotional detachment is simpler when the violence occurs halfway across
America from one's home.
Although the crime rate in the United

The Impact of Media Violence Essays
Media Violence and its negative impact has been discussed and debated for many years As children
grow into teens they encounter as vast amount of violence in the media, negatively impacting
today's youth. Teenagers who are exposed to media violence will fail to develop effective
socialization strategies and resort more readily to violence, which makes society a more dangerous
place. Through social contact, individuals learn to think and act in certain ways, this type of learning
is called socialization. One of the most influential agents of socialization is mass media. Children
spend an average of four hours in front of a television each day, and with each passing hour, they
witness between twenty and twenty–five aggressive acts...show more content...
They cause disruptions in neighborhoods and put the lives of their neighbors in danger by getting
involved with a life of crime. Everything these individuals learned was by observing it on the
television, this is known as the imitation effect (Phillips). What they observed was violence, so they
learned to be violent.
The way people behave and problem solve is also impacted from exposure to violence in the media.
Jeffery Johnson, of Columbia University, conducted an experiment in which he observed over
seventy families within seventeen years, focusing on their viewing habits and various behavioral
tendencies, finding that the amount of televisions watched during childhood increased the
likelihood of behaving aggressively (Phillips). This experiment is one of many showing that media
violence directly impacts behaviour, and has people resorting more readily to violence. Not only
does violence in the media have an impact on the way people behave socially, but according to a
study done by Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington, children who watched double the
average television viewing hours were twenty–five percent likely to be diagnosed with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Phillips) People diagnosed with ADHD have difficulty focusing, are
overactive, and often cannot control their behaviour, disrupting the way people do things ("ADD
/ ADHD in Children"). Being in a classroom or on the job with someone who has ADHD will not
only affect

Violence In The Media Essay
Violence in the Media: The Upside
The word violence has a negative connotation. When you hear the word, you immediately think of
people getting hurt, things being destroyed, and the aftermath that is left behind after a violent event
has occurred. While violence, most often, is not a positive experience for anyone, there is a
misconception that portraying violence in the media leads to more violent acts by people who view
it. Parents shield their children from violent video games and the nightly news. While they may
be well intentioned, they are unintentionally creating an environment that leads children to believe
that violence does not exist. "The rule of the real says that however strong media influences may
be, real life is stronger. Real love, real money, real political events, and real life, unmediated
interpersonal experience all shape kids' lives, minds, and behavior more powerfully than any
entertainment products. Maggie Cuttler, The Nation" (Haugen and Musser 1) Showing violence
in the media is not the cause of the problems in our society. We have a right to freedom of speech,
our lives are dictated mostly by our experiences, not by what we watch on television or play on a
game, and violence in the media can actually be an outlet for people.
On the other hand, those who believe that violence should not be shown in the media assert that
seeing violence can inspire people to do things that will harm others. Many of the school shootings
that have happened, such as

Media Violence Persuasive
Is Your Child Exposed to Media Violence?
We live in a society where violence is meticulously and silently engraining in our daily lives. As time
progresses, the entertaining media that children and adolescents have access to everyday such as
movies, commercials, TV shows, children's cartoons, video games, toys, etc. become more and more
violent. Media violence negatively affects the behavior of those exposed to it, especially children
and teenagers who experience violent media on an everyday basis. With the new generations being
born and raised in a society where violence is widely accepted and expressed, children are showing
violent behavior in earlier stages of life, which often begins with verbal threats or minor incidents,
but...show more content...
Children are ought to believe that in reality violence is the way to end conflict and that in doing so
they need to be rewarded instead of corrected. There is a fine but real line between what is healthy
and not in television for children to watch, with big prosecutions that in the long run include police
involvement, jail, and ultimately death.
Furthermore, death is not only one of the causes of youth violence; in present time death is also the
most common. " In the year 2000, violence –– suicide, homicide, accidents, and assaults –– was the
leading cause of death among young people" ("Media violence: facts," 2005). If none of the above
statements made against media violence have been convincing, this should at least be shocking to
most. How is it possible that living in a society where we call ourselves superior and modernly
developed, acts of violence account for the most part of youth deaths? And not only that but nothing
is done to change this pattern. It could be arguable that the youth's violent behavior involved with
the deaths mentioned is not necessarily correlated with violence in the media, but to a genetic
disparity. Even though this could be it has been researched that "very young children will imitate
aggressive acts on TV in their play with peers" (Beresin, 2009).These aggressive imitation soon
outgrow from just play to real case scenarios when the children grow up, causing atrocious effects.
Media violence and its consequences are

Violence in the Media Essay
Violence in the Media
In today's world, there is an endless amount of information available to people everywhere around
the globe. Mass media is definitely shaping our world, whether it is in a positive way or a negative
way. Television and the radio waves provide us with hours of entertainment. The emergence of the
Internet allows us to access thousands of pages of information within the reach our very own
fingertips. But with the convenience of all this information comes along a certain level of
responsibility. As a society, we Americans must decide what is appropriate information and
entertainment for the masses to access and enjoy. But does today's society give too much leeway in
what it thinks as "appropriate?" Does increased...show more content...
A glance or other expression can be a violation when a differential in power or opportunity exists
between characters. Violence can occur without involving violation. Much professional sport
involves considerable violence, but at least when the rules are obeyed, little violation.
This distinction is important because it is violence that clouds an impressionable mind, not
violation. This is so because a violation would have a somewhat reasonable cause, while violence is
reckless and chaotic in its nature. According to E.F Dubow and L.S Miller, authors of Television
Violence and Aggressive Behavior: Social Science Perspectives on Television, "Ignoring
consequences of violence (including the pain of victims, the victims' families, and the families of
perpetrators) or depicting the consequences unreasonably sets in motion a destructive encoding
process." There could be found a direct correlation between aggressive behavior and violence
witnessed on television. The more violence watched, the more desensitized a viewer would
become. Dubow and Miller further state "viewers become [fearful] and begin to identify with the
aggressors and the aggressors' solutions to various problems." It is this identification that causes
violent behaviors to become encoded in the person's mind when exposed to repeated violent acts.
The person may then come to see the world as a bleak and sinister place. Along with this

Media Violence Essay
Media Violence
Media violence is one of the most debated public issues society faces today. Television screens are
loaded with the glamorization of weapon carrying. Violence constitute as amusing and trivialized.
Needless portrayals of interpersonal violence spread across the television screens like wild fire.
Televisions spew the disturbing events such as children being assaulted, husbands inflicting domestic
abuse on their wives and children succumbing to abuse by their parents. Scenes of betrayal, anguish,
infiltrate the television screen. Unfortunately, a child becomes subjected to media violence.
Everything a child sees or hears in the media affects them in some way or another. The precise
effects of media violence on children are...show more content...
We as a society cannot succumb to believing such an opinion because we are very familiar with
violence and criminal activity resembling something from a movie scene or television show. Most
violent acts shown on television go unpunished and are often accompanied by humor. Rarely does
the media display the consequences of human suffering leading a child accept its reality. Of course,
crime can become the result of a number of influences working together; even researchers point out
the independent influence alone cannot directly contribute to the effect.
Evidence show children imitate aggressive behavior. Researchers conducted a study on students
happening in the mid 1990's in Israel. The focus of the study captured the effects of influence from
children watching World Wrestling Federation (WWF) matches. The study revealed startling
evidence demonstrating the students in the selected schools developed imitative behavior depicting
what they say in the wrestling matches. The children practiced banging heads, throwing opponents
to the floor, jumping onto them from furniture, pulling hair and poking their eyes with fingers. No
surprise when about half of the responding principals reported that these new behaviors resulted in
the use of first aid. In addition, the study found one fourth of the reported injuries required
emergency room visits or other professional medical care (Dube, 2000). In yet another

VIOLENCE IN THE MEDIA Essay
Violence has been a part of society ever since the days of the caves men, but only recently has
television lifted its ban on the graphic depiction of violence. American children and adolescents are
being exposed to increasing amounts of media violence, especially in television, movies, video
games, and youth–oriented music. Video game violence, children's cartoons, and music lyrics have
become increasingly graphic. In movies, action films depict vivid precise murders, rapes, and
assaults; with each sequel, the number of deaths increases dramatically. Although media violence is
not the only cause of violence in American society, it is the single most easily remediable
contributing factor. It is these social networks...show more content...
This is all because it was exposed at a time when socialization was most vulnerable.
There are many Psychological concepts that contribute to people's deviance such as their personality,
containment, and also through learning, which is observation of others. Television violence
influences behavior through observational learning, by reducing social constraints, and by arousing
aggressive tendencies. External social control is the attempt of others to control one's behavior,
however, it may not be just control but also influence. Although the viewer may not blindly mimic
violent acts portrayed on television, although it is all possible, many factors can contribute to what
dictates a viewers actions. One method by which the media may promote violence is through
imitation. Imitation includes more than simply applying a crime technique the criminal learned by
watching television. Fictional treatments of crime can inspire and empower potential criminals.
Every hour there are 9.7 acts of violence on T.V. and another 21.3 alone are cartoons. As children
watching the competition the coyote had with the roadrunner from Looney Tunes, which always
resulted in a violent attempt from the coyote to stop the roadrunner, does not teach that in a sense
competition can be healthy. Instead it turns to violence as a way of

Essay about Violence in the Media
Some believe that violence in the media is to blame for violence in people, but that argument is
undermined by the realization that violence existed long before video games and television. In
fact, violence has actually been steadily decreasing since these things have been growing in
popularity. Critics of violent media seem to long for the "good old days"; a time before there was
violence in the media. These critics fail to acknowledge that those "good old days" were actually
far more violent than today. While violence is still present in modern society, it pales in comparison
to the violence that was once a part of daily life. For most of human history, people have lived lives
dominated by violence. From primitive hunters...show more content...
"Homicide rates in France, Germany, Italy and Japan either failed to change with increasing
television ownership in the same period or actually declined, and American homicide rates have
more recently been sharply declining"(30). Despite the growth of violent movies, video games,
and television shows, or perhaps because of it, society as a whole has become a far less violent
place than it has ever been before. Proponents of censorship assert that violence in the media causes
violent behavior in children and young adults. As evidence, they point to things like the Littleton
shooters' history of playing violent video games and movies and the similarity of the shootings to
certain games. A study conducted by two psychologists at the University of Michigan is often cited
as having "shown that children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher
tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed" (31). More in
depth studies have contradicted these findings. Another group did a study which followed 875
children from age eight through eighteen in upstate New York. The group concluded that "the
correlation–0.31–would mean television accounted for 10 percent of the influence that lead to this
behavior" (31). It should also be known that this "only turned up in one of three measures of
aggression; the

Essay on Violence in the Media
Media is all around us. Everywhere we look, there is someone, somewhere trying to communicate his
or her thoughts to us. And with the new technologies in media, this message is stronger than ever.
Almost every home in America has a television or radio in it. The messages that are portrayed
through these mediums are unmistakable; buy me, listen to me, think what I think. With all of these
messages spinning around there are bound to be some bad seeds. Violence has become an important
issue, something that has become almost part of our daily lives. So often we lose sight of just how
serious violent messages in media can affect our daily lives. Violence in the media has become so
much more accepted in the...show more content...
This sometimes has news teams going to extreme measures to capture the most graphic footage.
The viewers like the most graphic footage, so news teams are always trying to get it. The
cyclecreates the news to be very violent and sometimes too violent or graphic for television.
Studies have shown that young children are often exposed to the violence of the real world through
the news. By being young, the children are often with their parents and when the parents are
watching the news, the children are also seeing the images. Since a child?s mind retains
information, the images are perceived by the child and the child then becomes desensitized and is
accepting of violent material. When the children grow up, they are already very accustom to
violence, and so very graphic images to not
Affect them. With society creating the news, and also watching the news, the cycle is made. The
people watch and want the most specific detail of the story and the news teams do everything they
can to give that to the viewers. Without the viewers there would be no audience and therefore
people would just be unaware of what goes on in the world. This is why the news is important. The
violence in today?s world is what people see because that is what goes on.
Violence in Children?s Shows Violence in the media

Violence in the Media Essay
Violence in Media and Subliminal Messages
Media negatively impacts its viewers, resulting in violent behavior through desensitization, creating
fearful and aggressive attitudes, while reducing their ability to be creative, which will only worsen in
the future due to the magnification and importance on violence in society today. Violence and
aggression were once seen as shameful; however acts of aggression have increased by 46% since the
1970's and by 2030 are expected to increase by another 24% (American Psychological Association,
2012). Movies, television screens and video games have all glorified violence and many various
forms of aggression. At a very young age, children's minds are incredibly easy to influence, their
brains absorb...show more content...
It was called Notel by her research team because it was a no television town. The city got
television for the first time in the year of 2003. Williams and her associates decided to study the
impact. Second grade students were watched over a period of two years for rates measured
psychological aggression. Two years after the introduction of TV, rates of physical aggression
among children in Notel increased by 160% and 33% after only one week .Therefore, it is not
without reason that in 2006, the House of Delegates passed Resolution 38: "The house declares TV
violence threatens the health and welfare of young Americans...and encourages opposition to TV
programs containing violence" (Brandon S. Centerwall, 2006). Demonstrating, how television has a
tremendous negative impact and the simple presence of this form of media results in an increase in
physical aggression, alas threatening the well–being of the individuals. Television has many negative
implications on society, as it is in human nature to mimic actions viewed, thus the increase in this
element will result in a 16% increase in the types of crimes commonly displayed on TV, including
homicide and abuse (American Psychological Association, 2012).Violence on television is one of the
many sources of media violence that causes aggression and causes immediate harm to children and
youth in the present

Media & Violence Essay
Violence in the Media and how it Affects Society
The effect of media is profound and far–reaching. All over the world, the media influences our
values and intrudes upon our deep–seated ideologies and beliefs. Indeed the media has been a
powerful force in influencing people's perceptions, and more importantly, their behavior as well.
Business, politicians, and showbiz personalities pay huge sums of money to media firms in order
create an image or change an existing one. Politics in particular, has been making use of the media
to generate public support for their campaigns and support for certain policies and legislations.
Indeed, the power of the media to affect our behavior has long been proven. Among the most pressing
...show more content...
from the National Institute on Media and the Family).
в–Є Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more time exposed to various forms of media (TV,
computer, game consoles, music, etc) than any other activity in their lifetime. (Kaiser Family
Foundation qtd. from the National Institute on Media and the Family).
в–Є Of over a thousand studies that have been done on the effects of violence in television and
movies, majority of them conclude that individuals, especially children who spend significant time
watching violence on TV and movies are more likely to display aggressive or violent behavior,
attitudes and values. (Senate Committee; Congressional Public Health Summit qtd. from the
National Institute on Media and the Family)
According to these figures, the younger the age of the individual, the more susceptible they become
to the adverse effects of exposure to media violence. (Trend 93) The aggressiveness are often latent
and presents later in life which is adds to the difficulty of measuring the actual effects of media
violence. (Freedman 137)
Women who spend long hours watching TV violence are more likely to respond violently towards
their spouses. There is an increase in physicality among women with higher media violence
exposure. (Partenheimer) In the same vein, men who

Media Violence's Impact on Youth

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